Renée Sarojini Saklikar — Episode Transcript

Host: Kyeren Regehr
Guest: Renée Sarojini Saklikar
Recorded at Haus of Owl Creation Lab, Victoria, BC, on lək̓ʷəŋən homelands

Links

Renée Sarojini Saklikar

Bramah’s Discovery: Book Three — Nightwood Editions

THOT J BAP project

Haus of Owl Creation Lab

Canada Council for the Arts

Transcript

Classical guitar intro music

[RENÉE READS POEM #1: “Amahl Tries to Communicate with Bramah”]

[Poem text omitted from transcript.]

Kyeren: Welcome to the Poet Laureate Podcast, a space for poetry and presence. The poem is listening. I'm Kyeren Regehr, and we're recording at Haus of Owl Creation Lab in Victoria, BC on lək̓ʷəŋən homelands We gratefully acknowledge the support of the Canada Council for the Arts for making this podcast season possible. We just heard Amahl Tries to Communicate with Bramah by Renée Sarojini Saklikar, who was the inaugural poet laureate of Surrey, BC. Welcome, Renée, and thank you for being here.

Renée: Thank you so much. It's an honor.

Kyeren: Renée, we just heard that poem now. How did it arrive for you?

Renée: Well, like a lot of poems in this epic fantasy series, it's about the ocean. As an immigrant settler citizen, I live in Vancouver, in East Vancouver, and I'm always asking myself when I'm writing epic fantasy, where is the ocean in my story? Mm. 'Cause I'm reimagining the West Coast on these unceded territorial lands of others at the place called Pacifica. And Amahl, in this poem, is an immigrant, migrant, refugee, a child worker in this dystopian fantasy of what's happened to this area in the year 2110. It's ruled by a consortium of global IT executives loosely based on guys like Elon Musk, but not them. So my imagination makes them guys from Liège in Belgium, and they manufacture semiconductors. But they've taken all over Baghdad, and they perform Eastern culture in a really sly and sinister way, and they call themselves caliphs or kings, and they kidnap children as child laborers, and they have kidnapped and transported Amahl. Oh. So he's known as a WCNSF, wounded child, no surviving family. He's a dear friend of Bramah, who had rescued him earlier in the book series. He's now trapped in an interrogation cell miles under the tunnels of this consortium holding pen in Baghdad, and he is trying to send this poem to Bramah, but it's blocked. And it's blocked for two reasons. One, Bramah has got hero fatigue. And she's wanting to find out more about her own origins. She loves- Mm... the beggar boy, as he's known, desperately, wants to find him. She's a bit sidetracked. And it's kind of like, "Yeah, I'm gonna get there. I'm gonna get there, Amahl. I will, I promise. But right now I gotta find out more about myself." And the message he just has sent, that you've heard, is also blocked by the evil powers. It's epic fantasy, right? Yeah. So by the evil powers of this consortium. So the two things are operating to block this poem from her ears.

Kyeren: Wow. Mm-hmm. Good thing I read the poem first, really. Yeah, this is so fascinating. And th- this is the third book, if I understand it correctly. It's THOT J BAP- Yes... is the project.

Renée: Yes. The Heart Of This Journey Bears All Patterns, which is- Oh, gorgeous. Thank you. Iambic pentameter, as English-y as you can get. But when, but when you make it an acronym, it sounds sort of, mm, vaguely exotic Eastern. And I- It does... that totally THOT J BAP. But it's actually The Heart Of This Journey Bears All Patterns. So I love the wordplay, which fills the whole series, unsettling, if you will, ideas about what is West and what is East. Yeah, you've really blurred the line. Yeah. Yeah. Wow. Blurring the line between novel and verse. Blurring the line all over the place. Mm-hmm.

Kyeren: Was there a moment when you realized there was a larger world or story or patterning gathering? B- 'cause I, I heard that you didn't really have necessarily connected poems at first. How did this come to be?

Renée: I think the easiest answer is the magic and gift of imagination- Mm-hmm which is truly something you receive, and I am very grateful for the-- having those receptors. I think that's my gift to receive. Right. Right. So that's the first broad level answer. The more practical working poet answer is I was working on my first book over ten years ago in twenty thirteen. I was finalizing the manuscript. I was at my friend Jackie Johnson out in South Surrey. I remember this exact moment that this happened. And to allay some of the trauma of what I was dealing with in that first book, which is about mass trauma- Yes... we can talk about that later or not, uh, I was having fun with epic fantasy and playing around with this idea of what would an epic in fantasy that dealt with climate change look like. And I was walking around her garden, and it hit me, "Oh, this is gonna be really big. My world-building is taking off. I can't possibly do THOT J BAP." I didn't know it was called that then. "I can't do this epic at the same time as I'm revising my first book, Children of Air India." So trigger warning about the bombing of Air India flight one eight two. So I realized, okay, I'm gonna go deep with this, and I have to give it the time it needs. So I, I, I just kept working on it as play, as, well, kind of fun, although it was a very serious topic. Mm-hmm. Accelerated climate change and the what happens to people during that- Mm-hmm... ravaged earth moment- Mm-hmm... in the far future, which has come closer and closer with accelerated climate change. But I had to kinda park it. So the way I parked it was I just started making notes and capturing these gift images of the imagination. But I was working on other books. I was doing other things. And it wasn't until the pandemic hit That my beloved partner said, "You know, you really need to finish this," 'cause it's literally taken over my life, the characters, the research, the boxes and boxes of materials, the digital files. Like, there's a massive archive. The poem is now divided into these three epic novels and verse. It's just shy of 1,000 pages. Yeah. It really is epic. Yeah. So- Yeah, yeah... that's the short version. I mean, it's, it's hearkening back to the epic poems of yore, most definitely. A- absolutely, whether it's Milton and Paradise Lost or the Mahabharata. The Mahabharata, yeah. Or, um, what is known now in the West as the Arabian Nights- Yes, yes... the series of nested frame tales. Because it was 1,000- Gilgamesh... yes. Yeah. Absolutely, all of it. Uh, Tolkien's nod to, um, the Finnish. Mm-hmm. Um, the Welsh. Yes. Edmund Spenser's The Faerie Queene, and like all those traditions, I wanted to bring the epic into a story that where I could see myself and, and my own hybridity of being- Mm-hmm both Canadian, immigrant, settler, citizen, South Asian. English is my first language. I wanted to bring who I was into the epic.

Kyeren: Yeah. Did that shape reveal itself to you as you wrote, Renée?

Renée: It did. What a gorgeous question. That was exactly what happened. I had no idea what I was getting into. Hey, folks, if you're writing epics, it's not for the faint of heart. And I really do- 'Cause you didn't set out to write an epic. Who would? I mean, it-... my God, it demands a lot of endurance- It does... and faith in yourself and higher powers. I am so more mystical, superstitious, faith-based now after three volumes than I've ever been. I look at these books and I'm like, "Where did this come from?" It wasn't me. I'm just taking notes from some higher power. I know that sounds very woo woo, and it doesn't absolve me from the responsibility of being the best craftsperson I can be, right- Yes... on the page. But I feel, Karen, you know what I'm talking about. And I also wanna honor the scientists whose work I read on accelerated climate change. Right. The social just activists whose work I read about wounded child, no surviving family. Mm-hmm. It's very tragic right now what's happening in the world. Just all the news, the things of our times that we hear, all of that feeds into. But the world-building of looking at the trees in my neighborhood and wanting to put tree mythology in my fantasy- Mm-hmm and looking at climate change. So one of the, the architectural anchors of this saga is the idea of weather and climate change as portals. Huh. So accelerated climate change has made it so that the, the veil between this dimension and other dimensions is getting more and more diaphanous, more and more transparent, and that's where my imagination has gone. Winter, spring, summer, fall are being decayed, degraded. They're changing. They're out of control. In fact, in this book, April and October become two fantastical beasts because of accelerated climate change. But if you ask me, "Well, where did you get the idea, for instance, to name one of the beasts in Bramah's Discovery is named Fanon or Fanon from the French philosopher Frantz Fanon, author of The Wretched of the Earth, or the other beast is named Gavroche from Victor Hugo's Les Misérables- Hmm the street urchin." Talk about wounded child, no surviving family. Yeah. That's Gavroche in Les Misérables. It is. So the two beasts, these are their names, right? So you can see where my reading, my responsiveness to different world literatures is woven in. But then to make it part of accelerated climate change and build that into portals that people go in and out of, honestly, a- as I now have a trilogy, I look through it and think, "This is some outer power that has guided me." Yeah, I'm feeling that.

Kyeren: What does your writing practice look like when you're working inside a world this large? Are you writing steadily into the project? Are you waiting for a particular kind of arrival? Hmm.

Renée: I think it can be what the page and the moment demands. It's primarily the first. If I've learned anything is to build a writing practice. Mm-hmm. If I waited for arrival all the time, I think those muses that have gifted me would kind of go, "Hey, you're not keeping up your end of the bargain." Mm. So how to listen, how to be still inside oneself to accept the gift- Mm-hmm... that requires practice. Uh, from my South Asian granny, you know, a yoga practice, a Vedic practice. From my father's side of the family that converted to Christianity, a prayer practice. You have to earn the right to write a certain type of highly crafted epic. And so in order to do that, you have to build technique, craft skills, read, listen, involve yourself in the skill. The example I've come to think about, about this idea of, you know, how does it happen that you're writing an epic, I have to rely on that day-to-day practice 'cause some days aren't that good. Some days life happens. Mm-hmm. And if I waited all the time, I don't think I could have completed this trilogy. Yeah.

Kyeren: Great advice.

Renée: Well, hopefully it doesn't sound too didactic-

Kyeren: No, no... 'cause you gotta do what you gotta do, right? Yeah, no. Uh, hearing about people's writing practices is really important. Yeah. I'm curious, y- how do the real world pressures, you know, political, ecological, et cetera, enter that imaginative space?

Renée: It's a subtle sideways slant process. I'm not writing an essay. Uh, there are no footnotes, although there's helpful notes at the back of each book. Nice. Uh, my publisher really helped me with that. Shout out to BC's own Nightwood Editions and my editors- Mm... Silas White and Janine Young. So I think I weave in the research from reading, making notes, reflecting, walking, doing yoga, and then I set it all aside, and that's where the gift of the imagination comes in, and it really boils down to characters. And that walk I took that I relayed to you in my friend's yard over 10 years ago, my characters were just beginning to form. Now they have taken over my life, these characters. This character Amahl, who there's a happy ending in this dystopia, you know, keep the faith, keep hope. But the research helps determine how I'm gonna shape the story, but the characters are the story engine of what's happening.

Kyeren: So really it kept the characters driving your narrative.

Renée: Absolutely.

Kyeren: Yeah. And poetry is their means of communication.

Renée: Oh, that's lovely.

Kyeren: What does poetry allow you to do inside an epic narrative that prose could not?

Renée: I've been thinking about this question. I think it endures, and it allows memory and imagination to coexist with fact and history- Mm-hmm in ways that other narrative forms do not. In book one, I went deep into the sonnet, 77-link sonnets, among many other things. Mm-hmm. Book two, I really looked at cantos, like Dante's cantos. Mm-hmm, mm-hmm. And also blank verse, like so much epic is written in. And in this book, I get as close to the novel as I can through prose poems. All three are character-driven, and I think the epic, in my study of all the epics we've talked about, it is an operatic form that allows for many different things. If you go back and look at those epics, I was astonished as I read through them. There's embedded poetry. There's nested tales. There's action scenes. I think there's a reason that Bollywood and- Mm-hmm... you know, big sagas like Tolkien and then Lord of the Rings, it's got song, it's got poetry, it's got action, it's got war, it's got love, it's got romance. Poetry in its epic form is the original way we told stories around the campfire, and not all of the poems are rhyming, but rhyme plays a big part of how the epic is structured and form poetry. There's a reason that blank verse exists so well. Mm. It carries a lot. But this idea of what is it about poetry and epic that can hold all these different things, history fact, sensory detail, imagery, sound- Yes... it can carry that. I hope readers feel that when they read it, you know?

Kyeren: That's wonderful to hear you describe it and, uh, you know, of course, these stories throughout history and time, you know, we remember because of the music within the language, right?

Renée: Body, soul, heart, mind connection.

Kyeren: Yeah. Epics exist because of that.

Renée: Yeah. You've just said it. How do we remember? Poetry helps us and it endures. One of the hero, anti-hero Bramah's mottos is, "Let all evil die and the good endure." And I was really preoccupied the more I got deeper into studying the epic. What endures? You know? When Samwise Gamgee says to Frodo, "Mr. Frodo, will they remember us?" I mean the- Mm... stories that really matter, you know? I wanted to write a story that really mattered.

Kyeren: Yeah. Yeah. And it's not just the epic journey. You have to be invested in the characters. But I love what you said about rhythm and that you've, you know, you've gone into the sonnet, you've gone into the iamb, and now you're into the, the prose poem, which also has its own rhythm, and we feel those rhythms in our body.

Renée: We do.

Kyeren: Yeah. Yeah. And it carries.

Renée: I'm actually thinking, I, I think all reading and writing is a kind of time travel. Mm. But because I'm an epic fantasy writer in this series, rhyme and poetry are a kind of time travel

Kyeren: I wanna hear more.

Renée: Well, I've embedded throughout chants, codes, ballads, rhyming poetry interspersed with the blank verse, the prose poem narrative. It's a way of subversive communication against the official language of the evil consortium.

Kyeren: Oh, right.

Renée: So the seed savers, the scientists who are running for their lives, the orphaned children, uh, Bramah tries to bring these all together in a resistance movement. She has to face some very tough choices in this book, and they communicate through a very specialized subversive code of rhymes, chants. They're embedded throughout the series. One of them is, "Jump the fence, don't look twice," and, uh, "Use your sleeve," you know, the, "Until the rains survive." They're always communicating little jokes and codes. It's kind of like graffiti of the voice. You know when you see graffiti everywhere? Yeah. Or tattoos with certain codes? Yeah.

Kyeren: Gorgeous.

Renée: Mm.

Kyeren: That's just brilliant. Wow. It's so unique. I wanna ask you about the way you write and whether your process, because we're talking about the body and rhythm, whether your process, uh, includes your own body. Like, do you get up and read? Yeah. Yeah? Yeah. It's so important, movement. Mm-hmm. Now, I didn't realize how important when I started out with that first book. I stopped moving my body. It was so traumatic, and I was carrying the voices of others in that first book. But as I got deeper into this, when I finally moved into writing this epic, yoga, walking, rhythmic activities where I'm moving the body, swimming laps- Hmm... um, anything that is a rhythmic invoking the right and left body. Now, there's a lot of Ayurvedic medicine about this that says when you invoke and exercise and move the right and left-hand sides of the body, right? When you're doing pranic breathing, left and right, swimming, walking, a lot of traditional Chinese medicine- Mm-hmm... tai chi, left and right of the body, prana, the soul force. Mm-hmm. You want to engage with that. Mm-hmm. I really believe writers, uh, code developers- Mm... anyone who has to sit a lot or be at the screen a lot or be at the page a lot, you know, the body wants to move. So to endure writing a long novel or a long epic, you have to think about sustenance. Yeah. And movement is part of our sustenance. Mm-hmm. Yeah, of course. You were just touching on the traumatic nature of your previous book. Did you find that changed the way your body was moving?

Renée: Yeah, I became very ill in my body after Children of Air India.

Kyeren: Did you really?

Renée: Yes, I did.

Kyeren: Wow.

Renée: And you know, again, I consider it a gift that I found my way back to movement. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Yeah. These books, and then one of the books I wrote with leading honeybee scientist Dr.- Mm-hmm... Mark Winston called Listening to the Bees, which came out in 2016, very much started to embrace joy, radiance, even in tough times, and movement and, you know, healing. How do we bring healing to what hurts? You know, if you look at my over six books, you see that more and more. There's a turning towards really positive energy.

Kyeren: I would love to look at where poems arrive for you, how they arrive for you, because this is, I think, why we're going with this whole body thing, right? Yeah. What does that look like when you get a poem? Mm-hmm.

Renée: It's about sound first. Mm-hmm. The moment of reception is almost always about sound. I love this question. I ask my students this. I teach creative writing now at Douglas College. Yes. And I will ask them, "Do you see something? Do you hear something? Is it a character-driven? Are you doing plot?" Like, where, where is it coming from? Yeah. So for me, it's sound, then the image at the moment of reception. And then if I'm crafting for the page, it's like a craftsperson technique, trying out what works. Then it's thought, then it's the ego attached to this isn't working. But not in the moment of inception. Mm-hmm. Moment of inception is reception to what I've allowed myself to open up to, dreamscapes. I keep, like many poets, you know, little devices, whether it's my phone or a notebook by my bed, to capture what is coming through. Keep the channel open. Tuning into a frequency that's a little outer world, another dimension. Yes. That's the moment of first conception. It's almost s- always sound and rhythm for me, then the image, and then everything else. Should this be a sonnet? Should this be a prose poem? How will this look on the page? How can I make it more interesting for the reader? How can I jam a verb and noun closer together to give that propulsive? That's all technique. Mm-hmm. But that comes later. I-- That's not part of the moment of generation and inception.

Kyeren: I want to ask you about your students and about this place where poetry begins. I'm remembering now that you teach at Douglas College, I think you mentioned it, and when you're mentoring students, are you helping them to find the origin of their creativity? Are you offering them craft first? Where's the balance in the way you're teaching?

Renée: So that's a very interesting question that I ponder a lot as an educator. Mm-hmm. It's Introduction to Writing Poetry. At Douglas, we have one and two-year programs. Lovely. Right now I'm-- Yes, it is lovely, and I'm not teaching advanced poetry. I'm teaching Introduction to Writing Poetry. Mm. So first it's getting them to understand that it's not a songwriting course- where they're going to use AI to just generate rhyming poetry all the time, and that can be really hard, and some of the students never get over that They, they just wanna get the credit and write things that don't have a lot of soul or imagination. But the vast majority of them, they start listening, they start understanding. I have them read a lot of different types of poetry. I have them access, for instance, Poetry In Canada's digital poetry bookshelf. You know, Google different poet laureate programs. I have them go onto rob mclennan's dUSK, uh, which has everything you could think of from experimental to traditional. So it's getting them to understand how broad poetry can be, that it's not just Hallmark greeting card rhymes, and some of them already get that. And the ones that are... kinda have that spark of being curious, then we can start getting deeper into, "Have you thought about developing a writing practice? So how are you gonna capture your ideas?" One of the things I find very helpful for beginning poets are prompts. Mm-hmm. So I say, "This week, for instance, write a poem about someone you love or hate, but there has to be some emotion. Make it longer than 14 lines. Don't give me any haiku 'cause that's a separate art." So I give them some parameters. Right. So structure, structure, parameters, and then off they go, and they have a week to do a draft poem. And then we look at it. I have them read it out loud, and the ones that kind of take to the ideas that I'm sort of seeding step by step, we look at craft and technique seeded with, "How are you going to be as a creative?" And I ask them the questions like your lovely questions. Is it sound? Is it image? A lot of my students are very image-driven 'cause they're ingesting a lot on social media. Yes. And they compose on TikTok. They compose on their phone. I, I... no judgment, right? No blame or shame. They are what they are, and they are where they're at. Yes. And so I just try and accept that and go with it and try and bring little bits every week. The idea is to build a practice, so getting them to understand, let's do this step by step in drafts. Most of them have no idea that you then revise a poem for the page. So many people don't know how many drafts it takes. Yeah. And occasionally, what was... Allen Ginsberg said, "First thought, best thought." Mm, maybe. Mm-hmm. That's not generally the case for me. Mm-hmm. And I like being a craftsperson. The, the analogy I give my students is, "Please come into my classrooms with a craftsperson's point of view." And I ask them, "How many people have gone to a coffee shop where the table is wonky or the chair is wonky, and you've gotta fold up a whole bunch of napkins or paper to make the chair flush, and how irritating that is?" It takes you out of the moment. That, when you don't have a handle on grammar or you don't understand line breaks or the craft of poetry, that's what it feels like to the reader or the receiver. That is such a fantastic analogy Thank you. It really helps me too. It's not about blame or shame. It's not about, "Ooh, bad. You're not good enough." It's not about that at all. It's about what does this work need? Yeah. How can I be a servant to the poem? Yeah. But I don't wanna sound too like I've figured it all out either. Sometimes it's just trial and error.

Kyeren: And play.

Kyeren: Wonderful. Renée, I know that you have a new poem for us, and I'm so excited about this. Before we hear this next poem, I want to pause for a moment to mark something special about this season of The Poet Laureate Podcast. Thanks to the generous support of the Canada Council for the Arts, this season has expanded into a kind of audio-first literary journal, with conversation wrapped around the work. That means each featured poet brings a new poem into the world first in sound here on the podcast, alongside two signature poems. So what you're about to hear is Renée's audio-first publication, arriving first through voice, breath, and listening.

[RENÉE READS POEM #2: Untitled audio-first poem]

[Poem text omitted from transcript.]

Kyeren: Thank you so much for sharing that.

Renée: What an honor to debut it. Like, it's literally hot off the pages. I typed it out in the last two days. It's been brewing and simmering all winter. Right. And the hilarious thing is, after I gave you my thing about what I tell my students, like if you wanna write song lyrics with rhymed endings and all that, this was really inspired by nagging didactically to my students not to do AI-generated one-syllable stressed rhyme endings. And of course, the poem, which is a sonnet, it's filled with it. But I wanted to challenge myself as a craftsperson. Mm. I think the working title I had was, "I'm telling my students every day or every week not to do this type of poem," but I wanted to challenge myself to do a good version, you know? A, a stand-up version of traditional rhyming rhythmic poetry. So what a gift it is to share this

Kyeren: It's a gift for us to receive it, and it's such a sonically beautiful piece.

Renée: Thank you.

Kyeren: Thank you, Renée.

Renée: And you know, this was scribbled and scratched in one of those bedside books- Mm-hmm... during a very busy, demanding term where I felt so distant from my own body and my creativity. I am so moved that I was able to have it and to work on it in the last few days and bring it fresh off the press here. It's, it's such a gift.

Kyeren: Do you find that you're using poetry sometimes as a way to decompress?

Renée: Yes. And also I think for this poem and for me is to stay connected to my creative self. Mm-hmm. I wrote this during a really tough term, swamped with grading, a lot of neurodiverse demands of my students, which I wanna honor and accommodate as I have a duty to do. I was just a busy working creative writing instructor, and this poem helped me reconnect with my creative soul.

Kyeren: Right. Which in turn, of course, would make you a better teacher as well.

Renée: Hopefully. Yeah. It was healing, right? Yeah, yeah. That I'm not just a grading teaching machine. I am a poet. I'm a working craftsperson, and I- the gift is there. I had to, I had to touch it again, you know? Mm-hmm.

Kyeren: When you're teaching that much, do you find that it's easy to kinda lose touch with that part of yourself?

Renée: Definitely. And I think skilled teachers find the balance. I'm always searching for that. I think poetry and movement, fresh air, and not looking at a screen all help.

Kyeren: Because you were the inaugural poet laureate of Surrey. What did it mean to be the first person to hold that role in such a large, diverse, uh, multilingual city? Did being first feel like freedom, responsibility, pressure?

Renée: It was all those things, but honestly, it was a gift. It was one of the best times of my life. I loved it. Yeah. Surrey is a city of yes. I think 'cause it's an edge city and all the things you've just described, it has a little bit of a chip on its shoulder about like, we're not Vancouver. And I was treated like a queen in the best sort of way. Everyone wanted to do something. I wonder, Kyeren, if you're experiencing the same thing, right? I see how busy you are and all the community building. We just did it all. We did everything all at once, and people just seemed to really dig it, and it was just a great fit. It was a radiant, lovely, fantastic, demanding time. I, I loved every minute of it

Kyeren: Oh, that's amazing to hear. Wow, your laureate program was described as multilingual and intercultural poetry outreach. How did that shape your understanding of such things as accessibility and multiculturalism? Not simplifying poetry, but making space for many different kinds of language and story.

Renée: Yeah, I think it was all those things. I think what I was really conscious of as an immigrant settler citizen person of color coming from a very humble middle-class background, I wanted a way to address race, class, all those things we don't talk about that much as Canadians- Yeah... in a way that was helpful and accommodating and safe. And I realized I would have to take the initiative to bridge gaps. I became a kind of poetry ambassador- Mm-hmm... to go to the different neighborhoods. I think like a lot of edge suburban cities, maybe like all cities, like the difference between Oak Bay and Fernwood or James Bay and Esquimalt, you know, we become kinda siloed in our communities, and I find particularly among young people and older people, so that intergenerational because of various things. Young people don't have access to transit or to cars. They're stuck on transit or older people can't be as mobile. They tend to be siloed in the different communities or neighborhoods. And so one of my goals as poet laureate was to break down the silos and have interconnectivity. So I think you saw that in the little book we published- Yeah Surrey Stories Connect, and our motto was, so I love mottos and mantras as you can tell, "Fear less, love more." Oh. And that was in Punjabi, English, and French on the cover. Wow Just acknowledging as citizen settlers, because we have such a wave of diasporic communities, that we're on the traditional territories of this Coast Salish peoples, and how do we share stories across boundaries? I think it was a really motivating thing to embody in my person, born in India, comes to Canada, grows up across what is-- we call Canada, and coming to terms with truth and reconciliation as a creator of color, I sort of embodied and could role model what they saw outside in their own communities. So I, I think it really worked. Like, there was a clicking moment, whether I was doing one-on-one consultations or I was going to different community centers, art centers, libraries, all the things I know you're doing. There was a sense of, you know, teenagers would come up to me and say, "Oh, we've never seen someone that looks like us," you know, doing these sorts of things, right? Yeah. So the, the representation, I think, was a good moment.

Kyeren: Really important.

Renée: Yeah, and full props to people like Heidi Greco, who helped bring a poetry program into place, the arts and culture community and committees. There was a whole raft of a lot of women who really worked hard to put the program in place, and the Surrey Library. Shout out to Megan Savage, one of the youngest head librarians in the system, who the libraries were the sponsor, uh, city, um, department that sponsored the program. Oh, we had so much fun, and we worked really hard, and we did lots of things.

Kyeren: Can you tell me a little more about some of the things that you did?

Renée: Well, yes. So we did chapbook making, uh, with teens, and so this idea of making, so of poets like Heidi and my friend Christine Rick, who's just an amazing Surrey poet and photographer, very craft-oriented, like how to get crafty with words in your hands. Mm-hmm. Young people just seem to love it. They love making little chapbooks and miniature things. Yeah. Then we did a display in the library.

Kyeren: Microzines.

Renée: Microzines. Yeah. Absolutely. We also had readings. I would do like a Christmas or seasonal reading, and people from all walks of life would come, and we did the open mic and try and structure it. The libraries were kind of our root, community root, and so that idea of public and accessible- We did intergenerational work. That was one of the things that was one of my mandates. You know, I- Mm-hmm... pitched to them when I was brought on that I really wanted to bring seniors, particularly seniors who can be shut in, like South Asian seniors or other ethnocultural groups who maybe aren't mingling. So we brought Chinese Canadian teenagers and South Asians at assisted living facilities quite well known called PICs in the Strawberry Hill area of Surrey, and we came together. We did a thing about Japanese Canadians, 'cause, um, Japanese Canadians in the Strawberry Hill area were the first settler farmers and no one knew about that. So we, we did things like that.

Kyeren: Wow.

Renée: Yeah. So there's a real kind of intercultural focus in trying to bring what does diversity look like in a poetry program, right? Yeah.

Kyeren: Sounds like you nailed it.

Renée: Well, we had so much fun. This is the thing. We got such great feedback. Yeah. And my consults, I'm sure you find this, like people are hungry for a bit of guidance, for a bit of mentorship.

Kyeren: Oh, yes.

Renée: They need a bit of voice. They need a bit of empowerment.

Kyeren: Yes. Yeah. Yeah. It's hard, too, to find somebody who can mentor or edit, and it's an expensive craft. So offering that free to the community is an in- incredible program, yeah. Very much. Renée, what happened to the laureateship?

Renée: Well, COVID happened.

Kyeren: Right.

Renée: And then there was a change in political governance on the municipal level. But the good news is they've brought back the program as a writer in residence, and I think it's doing very well. It's very successful. I'm very pleased, you know? Mm-hmm. I think that your community has to find what works at a given time, and I think the writer in pro- residence program is great

Kyeren: I wanted to ask you about your work with teens, and could you speak to what happens when young writers are given not just a space and workshop, but the dignity of publication? Like, did you see confidence or voice change through that process?

Renée: Yeah, absolutely, and I had some students years later, 'cause I help found and help curate Lunch Poems at SFU. Mm-hmm. They would come to the readings and say, "You know, Renée Sarojini Saklikar, you might not remember me." And I would remember their face, but not necessarily the name. Yeah. "You know, I'm in creative writing now at UBC," or, "I've-" Mm. "... gone on to do different things, but I'm still writing." And I love this phrase you've used, the dignity of publication. Yeah, I think it's really important. In my teaching practice, they write 10 poems, but they're not just random poems. I get them to make a chapbook at the end of, for their final portfolio, and it's amazing how much people will get invested when they're creating their own collections. Yeah. It is empowering. You're making. Making is a form of thinking. It's a form of creative resistance in these times, so. Totally. And al- it's also like you're manifesting it in the world as a, as an art object. Yeah, and then you're curating your own work. You're giving it more intention- Yeah... by bringing it together in a collection. There's nothing wrong with occasional loose poems, one after another, or random poems. That can be just lovely. Mm-hmm. But I also think there's a real power in curation of collection. Mm-hmm. And what you say, this dignity of publication, is lovely. Yeah, yeah. Thank you. Looking back, uh, what do you think a poet laureate can actually do inside a city? What remains after the term ends? Connections. Mm-hmm. Books, things that you've made, programs you've established. I think also the sense of empowerment that poetry matters- Mm... that there's a place for poetry. For me, it's about community connections. Yeah, the people that met each other through the program I thought was a really lovely legacy. Yeah. Allies. Yes. Allies for the arts. Yeah. Yeah. For your own work. Absolutely.

Kyeren: Where do you see poetry sitting right now in this culture that we're in? You know, this fragmented attention?

Renée: Well, it's such an interesting question. I actually think poetry is where it's always been. Hmm. You know, the margins are at the center. Poetry makes nothing happen. These are all these famous poets saying things. When we look at the way poetry is being composed, whether it's my way, pencil to paper, and then to the screen, and then getting published, or whether it's my students composing on TikTok, they're rhyming verse or whatever they're doing, it's all good. Maybe poems are being texted. Maybe they're being saved on a WhatsApp app. Um, it's all there. I think poetry is eternal. It endures because it's soul, mind, body connection. And so poetry of resistance, poetry of creative resistance, poetry of standing truth to power, poetry of love, it will always be there. It is in our DNA to tell stories and to recite poetry. Hmm. So beautifully said.

Kyeren: Now that your trilogy is complete, what threshold are you standing at? Is there any form or question or terrain that's calling you?

Renée: Yeah, there sure is. So the first thing I would love to share is writing a trilogy and epic of almost 1,000 pages. One of my dream threshold moments is to find time this summer to sit down, maybe at the beach, you know, in the shade-... I'm a big shade hunter, um, and read all three books and get to the almost 1,000 pages and just immerse myself and see what I have created and what the powers have gifted me to create so, like, I get a sense of what is there. I'm just dying to do that, actually.

Kyeren: Amazing.

Renée: So to look back, reflect, learn, delve deeper into what has been gifted me to create.

Kyeren: Wow, that would be incredible.

Renée: And then secondly, I'm working on a children's book.

Kyeren: Yay.

Renée: So looking forward-

Kyeren: Oh, lovely...

Renée: it is a real threshold, like Janus, 'cause I was born in January, right? Looking forward and back. So looking forward, I'm working on a children's book. I was very grateful to get a Canada Council grant, and it's middle grade, early middle grade. The, the main character's name is Mystery. Mm. And they are nine and a half, and their pronouns are they/them. And yeah, really looking forward to it.

Kyeren: So it's a chapter book?

Renée: I think it will be a chapter book, yes.

Kyeren: And rhythms, rhymes, verse?

Renée: Yes. Yes, there's going to be some verse, and Mystery is going to have some adventures. There's some bullies she's gotta negotiate with, and she lives also in a kind of fantasy fable world that's loosely based on ours, and they are going to be really interested in how they lovingly stand up to some parental pressure and family pressures. Yeah, I'm just working it all out right now. I can't wait to get into it.

Kyeren: That's amazing. I'm glad that you're birthing that one into the world, too.

Renée: Thank you.

Kyeren: Renée, is there something that you wish people would ask you?

Renée: Well, I wish they would ask me about what it's like to go deep with an art form. What did I have to do to open myself up to that art form?

Kyeren: Oh, yeah.

Renée: Maybe I'll read a final Bramah poem if that works at some point.

Kyeren: Absolutely.

Renée: I love being asked about some of the things you've been so generously asking me. Like, what is it like to really go deep with epics? Mm. And, you know, how does it change you? Peter Brook, who adapted the Mahabharata, he has the little boy speak to Vyasa in the very beginning of this massive nine-hour film, you know, "What's your poem about?" And Vyasa says, "It's about the history of the world, and after you read it-" Mm... "you'll be someone else." Oh, that's so good. Yeah. That's what I would love someone to say, you know, "Are you someone else now?" Like what- Are you someone else- Yes... now, Renée? Yes. Thank you for asking me. I absolutely am. It changes you when you embark on a long journey, and you come out the other side, it changes you.

Kyeren: The other thing is that, you know, with all of the reading that you've done, all of the research, like that must have been at first someone else, and then all of the writing, like another step Yeah. Yeah. Like, like what was the difference between those two phases of the, of the work?

Renée: Which I undertook simultaneously.

Kyeren: Oh, you did? Wow.

Renée: And so different parts of the left and right-hand brain, which is a gift to be able to toggle. I think the lawyer in me, I was trained as a lawyer, practiced as a lawyer, don't anymore. I think the legal brain and the creative brain, the left and the right, this is the gift, to be able to merge what I call docupoetics, the lyric and the documentary merging together, and the epic allows for that. Mm-hmm. So I think that- that's what, what changed me, that I could go so deep with rhyming sonnets and documentary intertext and merge them together in this hybrid form.

Kyeren: So you were literally researching and writing simultaneously?

Renée: Yes.

Kyeren: Wild. A wild ride.

Renée: Yeah, really, because you're getting more information and you're producing more work. Yeah, and for book two, putting it all into blank verse. Yeah, yeah, that's quite a feat.

Kyeren: Were you dreaming in blank verse?

Renée: No, that's interesting. No, I continued to dream in image and sound. But I started hearing blank verse everywhere. Yeah. The 10 beat, right? And don't they say it's the sort of universal English pattern? Yeah, I mean, it's, you know, the heartbeat. The heart. Yeah, absolutely. That's incredible.

Kyeren: Thank you, Renée, for your presence and for your words today. It's been so wonderful to spend this time with you. We again gratefully acknowledge the support of the Canada Council for the Arts. Renée Sarojini Saklikar's biography can be found on the podcast website and in the show notes, and books by Renée can be found or ordered through your local independent bookstores. If this episode meant something to you, please share it with someone who might need poetry today. And Renée, would you please leave us with a final poem and of course tell us about it before you begin?

Renée: I certainly would. My pleasure to. So in this epic fantasy in verse, book three, our hero/anti-hero Bramah, the time-traveling locksmith Brown, brave and beautiful, actually allows herself to be captured by the evil manufacturing executive who masquerades as a caliph, a king of Baghdad. He's captured her. Uh, they're playing a game of chess, of course, and like the king with Scheherazade, he wants a story after a story. He has evil intentions towards her. Probably wants to abuse her. She's not gonna let it happen, and we're gonna dive in midway through a little bit of conversation that's in a poem.

[RENÉE READS POEM #3: excerpt from Bramah’s Discovery]

[Poem text omitted from transcript.]